If you are a hard core Google Analytics user (like me), you are probably already familiar with Goals.

What is a Goal?

In simple terms, A goal is something that a site/business wants to achieve. So for instance, If its a E-commerce website, one possible goal can be the orders or sales that take place online. For a consultation firm, the goal can be to get the contact information of the client and so on.

In a typical buying process, a buyer actually goes through a series of steps to complete your goal. These steps, in traditional marketing are often referred to as AIDA model. AIDA stands for Attention > Interest > Desire & Action.

So basically in order to complete a Goal, a prospect will often go through these 4 steps or in other words will go through a sales funnel. At the top of the funnel, you will often find a lot of prospective customers who are probably paying attention to your market & also probably interested in your product, however as they go deeper into the buying process, many of them feel disconnected and lose their desire which results in them taking no action (no purchase/order/sales).

How can Google Analytics help with Funnel Visualization?

Google Analytics has everything that you need to keep track of your Website goals as well as to track whatever that is happening inside your Sales Funnel.

So for instance, a company like Dell comes up with an online offer almost every other day. One of their primary goal is to get as many order as they can for each of the respective models/units. With hundreds and thousands of visitors coming to Dell’s website everyday for various reasons, not everyone is actually becoming their customer (placing an order). Some visitors are probably just browsing, some goes deep into the order page and then leaves probably because they didn’t find the right configuration that they were looking for and some are probably just confused in the order process etc.

Unlike a physical store, where the sales person has the ability to communicate with the buyer and also read his body language to better understand the needs and wants, a website just doesn’t have that luxury!

It’s bascially up to you (the webmaster/owner), to look at what happens during each step of the sales closing process (i.e. conversion / sales funnel) and find a way to make each page in the process as helpful and painless as possible.

So how can Dell identify the visitors that goes inside the sales funnel but doesn’t complete the whole process? How can Dell find out why some of their visitors are leaving their site in the middle of an order process?

Google Analytics Funnel Visualization is the answer!

How to Set Up Google Analytics Funnel

There are plenty of tutorials (including the official help pages from google) that shows you the steps for setting up a funnel in Google Analytics [I included some of them at the end of this article].

So instead, I’ll share a video with you that sort of demonstrate the Google Analytics Funnel Visualization report in just 60 seconds! [Source: Google Analytics Blog]

Thanks so much for this helpful article on conversion funnels! I especially liked the funnel graphic. Fyi, I used the graphic in a post (http://bit.ly/N4qIUf) about refocusing a debate in my locale on the conversion funnel, or, put simply, what people want. Let me know if this use is ok. I captioned credit with a link to this article. Thanks!